I Awoke on Christmas Day
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: There is always more eloquence in the past than the present, even if that past is something I've long since forgotten...


**A/N:** Written for the Flt Green Room Challenge, write about a trope. The trope I picked was amnesia.

And don't ask what I did with this. I managed to confuse myself with the tenses, but I rather like how it came out so I'm keeping it.

* * *

**I Awoke on Christmas Day**

You know, words so easily faded away into past, save what was etched in stone. But that was so difficult a task that it seemed a mistake was always made. Maybe that why we humans have the ability to forget parts of our lives – the parts that, ultimately, provide no value to our continued existence. The parts of our lives that we could have done without, or never should have happened.

And sometimes, I can't help but wonder if my entire childhood had been a mistake.

I awoke on Christmas Day of 1999 with no personal memories save my name. It was a strange feeling, as I had retained all I needed to function like a boy my age _should_ function. It was just those memories one built up, the stuff that made photo albums and emotional connections, that had vanished into the winter snow. And the summary I received in return was by no means adequate.

I felt a little like a computer, honestly. Maybe that's what attracts me to them, or maybe it's this part of my past I can't remember. But I was like a new computer, who had embedded in it the information it needed to run, but nothing that distinguished it from another computer. It knew how to start, how to switch of. It knew how to open files, install programmes, and run them. It knew how to protect itself, on some bare level. But it knew next to nothing else.

I was like that too. And yet, I was alive, living, without any need for that extra information. It was just a longing that existed in me, a want to know that past I had lost to the winter snow of 1999 – or perhaps before. But no-one can understand. No-one knows _how_ I had lost ten years of personal memories. I didn't know either. Did I want to know? Maybe; it was hard to say without actually knowing them.

That made me wonder, of those memories I had built up in those ten years were worthless, inconsequential. If that was why I had forgotten them, because they had no place in my current life.

But somehow that seemed wrong. Logic said, after all, that the curious followed the trail of their curiosity. If fate decreed I didn't need to remember then she should have taken all traces of those memories with her.

* * *

I have this egg. I'm not sure where it came from, honestly. And it's a strange egg.

What's stranger is that Dad never sees it, no matter where it is. It could be hidden under a mass of shirts, stuffed there guiltily because some part of me inherently knows it's something I shouldn't have. Or it could be innocently sitting in a corner of the kitchen while I fetch some cereal…and I've got no idea how it winds up there either. Or on the toilet lid when I'm in the shower. Or under the dining table when I'm trying to do my homework. Or under the desk in school. It's like it's stalking me…but I'm more concerned about the fact it can move at all.

Unless it starts hatching. Then I would be _really_ concerned about that.

But if it's not, then it should be a still egg. Even if it's way bigger than a chicken egg, and it seems like my computer and the microwave malfunction every time the egg is near. I lock it in the cupboard sometimes, but then I feel ridiculous and take it out. After all, who's ever heard of having to _lock_ an egg up before?

I know nothing about the egg. Not where it came from, or even what it _is_. I think, sometimes, it's impossible for such a thing to exist in our world, and maybe it is. But the moment the thought comes to my hand it's gone again. As if some firewall in the computer is attacking it, thinking it as a virus.

Too bad it's not a Trojan – those things are stubborn. Takes hours to get it off the system. Though Trojans are never anything useful. They're just really annoying bugs. Maybe that thing tickling my mind, whenever I think of this egg possibly having come from another world, is an annoying bug as well. Something I don't even need. Something I'm better off without.

Though it's kind of hard to believe something like that when those thoughts just nag. It makes me think this egg really _did_ come from another world, but if I think too long on it my head starts to hurt. Like a computer freezing up, trying too hard to keep whatever secret from its user. But what's the point? An experienced enough hacker will get through it eventually.

But the human mind is not that simple, is it? Memories that are lost aren't so easily returned, if at all. It's not like you can "recover" a person's mind as you do a hard-disk. It's not as though nothing has changed in the process.

Sometimes, if its minor files that are lost, the computer doesn't even realise they're gone. But I know what I'm missing. I know I _knew_ something about that egg long ago. Or maybe not so long ago. It still seems within reach…somehow.

But until then, I have an egg wandering about on its own and following my every move, and my Dad – or anyone at school for that matter – never seem to notice it.

And I've got a whole lot of gaps in my memory. And looking at that egg really helps thumb them out. Like I don't remember password protecting a certain folder on my computer – or even getting my computer, for that matter. Or who my mother was. Or who my friends were – if I had any. I think I did though, and I think this egg has something to do with those friends, because it also has a tendency to snuggle into bed with me and its presence feels…warm, somehow.

I don't know what's driving me more crazy: the egg or the lack of memories that I seem to get along fine without – or I_ would_ get along fine without if it wasn't for that egg.

* * *

My memories will come back someday, I think. My egg will hatch at some point as well.

On that note, when did I start calling that egg mine? I guess it really can't be anybody else's, what with the way it follows me around and all, but it seems strange somehow. An egg still has parents after all, and human eggs stay within the mother – unless you listen to Dad's "babies came out of the computer" theory.

Really dad, it's a little late for that? Though it's sure advanced from the old-time cabbage patch theory. I wonder what I'll be telling my children. When I have children of course. I wonder who I'll marry. Maybe that fiery red-haired girl from the finals – though I don't think she liked me very much. Still, she reminds me of someone…somehow. I really don't know how; it's nobody I remember, but maybe somebody I know. Maybe somebody I'll come to know in the future – or I'll get to know _her_, and find they're two different people after all.

I'm not sure what it is, or why it's passing again. It seemed, that first time I watched that new anime, "Digimon", it began again. That feeling of having lost something…not important, since I don't think I would have lost it at all if it were that, but something that had existed, shaped me, then taken away from me. Some mistake I had learnt enough from to not need its memories any more. Some life I'd already milked all I needed from it from.

Or maybe destiny doesn't believe me ready for those memories. Maybe it's something I'll need to be older still before I can have them. Maybe it's something I'll remember later – when I'm older and I'm wiser and I'm stronger from years in another life, another time. Or maybe it's a mistake I don't need to be reminded of after all; maybe that's why destiny chose to take those memories away from me, so I never remember those worthless things again…

But there are reminders everywhere, and I can't help but say that destiny's done a pretty poor job if that's the case. That new Digimon series has me thinking I know people who are like that, people who look at those characters, act like them – and who aren't just cosplaying at the mall. And those Digimon… Somehow I feel I knew them as well, from some faraway dream. But that's what all the ads said: "the stuff built from childrens' dreams" and all that.

I wondered for a while if they really had found a way to see into people's dreams. But as I got more into it: as games and a new season of Digimon came out, I started thinking a little differently. Some of the episodes have a shadow in them, and no matter how I try to filter that shadow out, I can't get a clear picture of it. Maybe when the rest of technology becomes affordable I might be able to do it.

I'm not sure why I need to know. But I do. Just like I need to know memories I'm living without are still important – even if I've forgotten them. Maybe there's a reason I'll find out some day, in the future. A reason these memories, this understanding, was taken away from me. Maybe it's not a mistake – but it is easier to think of it as one, because if it's not a mistake it's important, something I shouldn't have forgotten.

I don't know. Maybe my crazy egg will hatch into a genie, and then I'll get some answers. Or maybe I'll be happily married with happy kids and never know.


End file.
